the machine is still us/ing us

i streamed michael welch's talk at personal democracy forum '11 and was inspired to revisit his two classic videos on how the web has changed our lives. both of these still give me goosebumps at points, but we all know i'm a softy for web 2.0 optimism. all these years later one is that much more aware of what's absent from the relatively early "the machine is us/ing us,"--no twitter, no facebook, and in the earliest draft i saw years ago there wasn't even YouTube. still, a moving pair of shorts on change, connection & possibility. take 7 minutes and watch them, or watch them again.